Introduced by Republican majority leader Ray Rodrigues, the proposal starts off by requiring that non-terminal patients must have a doctor at least 90 days before they can get a cannabis recommendation.

Starting next year, sales of recreational marijuana in California are expected to generate $1 billion in sales tax revenue. That’s an amazing amount of cash—emphasis on cash.

As has been the case since the cannabis industry became an industry, most marijuana businesses in America do not have bank accounts, because, thanks to federal law, banks do not accept their money.

This is a problem everywhere: As much as 40 percent of the marijuana businesses in Colorado, which recorded more than $1.3 billion worth of sales last year, do not have bank accounts, the Pew Charitable Trusts reported.

Some local credit unions quietly take smaller accounts, but big banks are staying away.

It’s well known that the drug war is one of the main sources of our country’s overpopulated prisons. However, there is another negative aspect of the drug war that is often not addressed.

Drug laws allow police to routinely conduct searches based on expansive interpretations of probable cause. In turn, any evidence of a crime unrelated to drugs is admissible in court, as long as it was discovered within the “plain view” of the officer.

Unfortunately, the standard for probable cause seemingly continues to diminish, and the drug war indirectly provides law enforcement with a blanket justification for violating the 4th Amendment.

A 6-to-1-ruling this month by the Kansas Supreme Court, State v. Howard, highlighted this issue.

Though cannabis is legal in the District of Columbia, there isn’t much medical marijuana access in the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. Virginia is still a no-go zone, and four years after lawmakers in Maryland approved medical marijuana, would-be patients in that state are still waiting for the first delivery.

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was one of two research institutions in the U.S. to receive funding to see if smoked marijuana helped combat-related stress, as a growing body of anecdotal evidence suggests.